Access to technology still depends on the language a person speaks. While voice assistants, transcription tools, and text-to-speech systems are becoming common in major global languages, millions of people who speak marginalized or low-resource languages remain excluded.
To better understand CLEAR Global’s impact as an organization focused on low-resource language technology, and to guide our future direction, in June 2025 we commissioned an independent evaluation of our language technology efforts.
Key findings
The evaluation provided valuable, practical insights, recognizing CLEAR Global’s strengths while identifying areas for sharper focus.
What CLEAR Global is doing well
- High-quality language data collection: CLEAR Global’s ability to collect, curate, and release reliable language datasets for under-resourced languages is widely recognized, with partners like Digital Umuganda highlighting the difference our tools make.
- Global reach and trusted brand: with more than 100,000 linguists connected to the TWB (Translators without Borders) Platform, CLEAR Global has an exceptional global network and reputation that helps us drive complex, multi-partner, and multi-language projects.
- Project management and coordination: the team excels in securing funding and organizing effective collaborations, ensuring language technology projects come to fruition.
Where CLEAR Global needs to refocus
- Leveraging industry-standard models for training, while contributing high-quality datasets from CLEAR Global to fine-tune and enhance their performance.
- Concentrate technical capacity on core competencies: taking on areas like app development, model training, and server hosting has spread resources thin and distracted the teams from core strengths.
- Think about sustainability ahead of development: many technology projects have ended after the pilot phase, often due to funding priorities and limited pathways for handover to local partners.
Strategic direction
The evaluation has helped clarify the next steps. CLEAR Global will focus on where we add the most unique value while building partnerships where others excel.
Priorities moving forward
- Data leadership: we will double down on producing high-quality, open, ethical, and well-documented datasets for low-resource languages, optimized for platforms like Hugging Face.
- Expanding TWB Voice: by making our data collection tool, TWB Voice, available to external organizational partners or local communities, offering tools needed to engage their communities and activities, we provide an opportunity for others to autonomously collect data and develop their own language AI.
- Empowering the TWB Community: CLEAR Global will aim to provide communities with more opportunities to engage in language AI development through tasks such as evaluation, rating, and validation. These activities are essential to ensuring that AI tools are inclusive, fair, and representative of marginalized language speakers.
Why it matters
- As AI and language technology advance, there’s a real risk that communities speaking under-resourced languages will be left behind. Many of the world’s most widely used models simply don’t serve these languages well or at all.
- CLEAR Global has a unique role to play not by competing with major tech companies but by providing the essential data, expertise, and community engagement needed to build inclusive, ethical, impactful language technologies.
- By focusing on our strengths and working in partnership with organizations that can scale solutions, we help ensure that everyone, regardless of language, can be part of global conversations.
The opportunity ahead
This strategic realignment positions us to solidify our role as a global leader in data for low-resource language technology, while driving new partnerships with academic institutions, social impact actors, and technology companies. It will open doors to new funding streams that prioritize ethical AI and inclusion, and it will reinvigorate our linguist community by providing meaningful, empowering, and ongoing opportunities to collaborate and contribute.
This evaluation affirms that we are progressing toward our intended goals. CLEAR Global’s greatest impact lies in leveraging our global community and expertise in data collection to help close the language technology gap.
With a focused strategy, strong partnerships, and an empowered linguist community, we can help make language technology work for everyone, in every language.
Together, we can build a future where every language and every voice are heard.
For partnerships or more information, contact us at info@clearglobal.org.